RANDOM REMINDER

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30543, 11 September 1964, Page 20

RANDOM REMINDER

RUBBLE TROUBLE

For those not accustomed nor, indeed particularly eager to engage themselves in manual labour, three yards of aggregate makes an impressive heap. Particularly when it has to be shovelled a considerable distance to leave a path clear. The man was not at all keen on manual labour, but he was building a house and felt more inclined than usual to Jessen the builder’s burden by doing this and that, all of them tasks which seemed to require vast resources of energy and ingenuity. But at length he had a shed up on the premises and invited the firm storing his furniture to deliver it so he could put it in his shed. Which was where the three yards of aggregate came in, or went out. He had to leave the path free for the truck.

It took him all day and cost him dearly to shovel all the stuff away to one side. That was on a Wednesday. On the Thursday, with the furniture due next morning, he came home in the afternoon and found, on his path, three yards of aggregate. Three more yards, that is. He telephoned the firm: there had been a mistake, it had been delivered at the wrong address. The property-owner invited the firm to remove the stuff. . This the firm was clearly unwilling to do, because it had evidently come to the conclusion that it would be more expensive in wages-time to have it collected than to leave it there. “Can you use it?” they asked the man. The property owner made a very brief speech. “No.” he said. They pleaded with him. He had plenty

already, he said. By now they were very upset. There would be no charge at all, they said. He could have it. This persuaded him. He said it would be all right to leave it It meant of course, that he had to get the shovel out and start all over again, ultimately finishing with a small mountain of aggregate and no great desire to plant a Union Jack at the top. He had the compensation of all that free material. Yet the obvious flaw in the scheme had not escaped him, either. With so much stuff on hand, it is clear he will have to revise the plans for his house and its amenities. He will have to use the aggregate, lay down more concrete. He will, in fact, have to do a great deal more work.